New York names road after Allama Iqbal

NEW YORK: New York City’s Queens borough named a road after Pakistan’s national poet Allama Iqbal, as Independence Day comes around the corner.

“Allama Iqbal Avenue” was inaugurated at a well-attend ceremony in the Richmond Hill section of Queens, amid loud slogans of “Pakistan zindabad” and people waving the national flag.

According to Associated Press of Pakistan, the event marked the culminative lobbying efforts of Pakistani-American community members. The not-for-profit group American-Pakistani Advocacy Group (APAG) also played a key role.

“It is a proud moment for all of us,” Ali Rashid, who heads the APAG, told cheering Pakistani-Americans, most of whom attended the ceremony in traditional dresses.

“It is an Independence Day gift to the Pakistani-American community here as well as to the people of Pakistan,” Rashid, who spearheaded the campaign, said.

The ceremony was also attended by New York City government official and Assembly council members, Ms. Jenifer Rajkumar and David Weprin, who called Iqbal a “great thinker” and paid tributes to his life and mission.

In 2019, a section of a busy avenue in Brooklyn, New York City, was named after Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in another sign of activism by the Pakistani community. A board bearing the inscription “Mohammad Ali Jinnah Way” was unveiled on the Coney Island Avenue, where the Pakistani community is concentrated